#nihilixir

[argentvive]

Dune: Alchemy or Not?

I read the first couple of Dune novels ages ago, before I'd even heard about literary alchemy. I recently watched Dune 2, and was surprised to pick up a few alchemical references--but were these intentional by Herbert? Or just echoes of standard fantasy themes? Dune has a massive quantity of analysis online, but I couldn't find anything using literary alchemy? Can someone send me a link, if such a thing exists?

Just going by the films, you could argue that these characters are playing the standard roles in an alchemy story.

The alchemist(s) who shape the protagonist and put him in the crucible to test and perfect him - the Bene Gesserit

The protagonist, the Philosopher's Stone-to-be - Paul Atreides

Paul is also the Philosophical Child of his father Leto Atreides and mother Lady Jessica. Not sure whether they are marked in the traditional alchemical way, as Sun and Moon, or Sulphur and Mercury, etc.

Paul should have an alchemical partner, but at this point in the story I can't tell if that's Chani, his sister Alia, or possibly someone else.

To me the most obvious alchemical reference is the Water of Life.

It's sapphire blue, like the fifth element, the quintessence. It's even presented in a flask that looks identical to the alchemist's alembic. However, while it grants great powers, it is ultimately destructive even if it doesn't kill immediately. So rather than being alchemy's Elixir of Life, it is a Nihilixir, a force of destruction. (See my discussion of the poet John Donne's use of the term.)

[argentvive]

Alchemy: Negative Transformation--the Nihilixir

I finally found the John Donne poem that describes his despair and descent to nothingness when his love dies.  Here’s the great Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day. 

Love’s alchemy had once transformed him to “Sun”--to ”a quintessence even from nothingness.”   A normal, positive transformation.

But now he has been transformed in reverse. a negative transformation.

For I am every dead thing...

He ruined me, and I am rebegot

Of absence, darkness, death, things which are not....

I, by love’s limbecke, am the grave

Of all, that’s nothing.

(”Limbecke” is another word for the alchemical vessel, the alembic.)

The reverse of the Philosopher’s Stone, the Elixir, is the Nihilixir.  I just learned this word today; its source is Johann Ambrosius Siebmacher, The Sophic Hydrolith (1619).  Cited in Charles Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre (1980).

Probably the best known negative transformation in fantasy literature is Frankenstein’s Monster.  Ser Gregor Clegane is clearly in that tradition as well.  Cersei Lannister in the books fits too.